27

To: HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW MARK YELIZAROV

Published:
First published in 1929 in the journal ProletarskayaRevolyutsiya No. 2-3.
Sent from Shushenskoye to Moscow.
Printed from
the original.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1977,
Moscow,
Volume 37,
pages 118-119.
Translated: The Late George H. Hanna
Transcription\Markup:D. MorosPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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June 15, 1897

In the last post but one, Mark, I received your letter
of May 23. At last you, too, are getting down to the
business of “spoiling paper”—that’s fine. I hope that the
“terrible boredom” you complain of will make you write more
often—I should be very glad of it. Moreover we are in rather
the same position. We are both living in villages and quite
alone—true, I am a bit further away—and so we must make
an effort to correspond more often.

It was news to me that Kokushkino is up for sale, and
that Mitya has gone to Kazan to see about
it.[1] Has he
power of attorney to handle the estate? Write and tell me
how the matter is settled. On the one hand it seems to be
a good thing that it will be finished with once and for all,
but on the other hand the “finish” is a most unpleasant,
troublesome and, most likely, unprofitable one.

I have not only not received the box of books—I did not
even know that it had been sent. Who was it sent to and
when? To whom was the carrier’s receipt sent? Write to me
about all this. From Mother’s letter I know that they
intended sending it through a carrier’s office. That means
it will take a long time, probably two or three months. If
any new books were bought to be sent with the others, please
let me know (if you remember) what they were, because
I do not risk ordering any at the moment, thinking they are
already on the way.

I have begun receiving Russkiye Vedomosti and read it
with a voracity that can be explained only as a reaction
to the long absence of newspapers. Has anything else been
ordered? (Russkoye Bogatstvo, Vestnik Finansov—in
Rybkina’s[2] name; German publications). I receive the
newspapers on the thirteenth day after Wednesday and Saturday.
That means that the post from Moscow here leaves on those
days; bear that in mind in case you have to make any
calculations about sending things.

The day before yesterday I received the report of the
Society for the Organisation of Popular
Entertainments.[3]
Thanks.

I have not yet received a single letter from our people
abroad. On account of their travelling they probably had to
wait a long time between my letters and wrote to me less often.
I do not know how to write to them now. It would hardly
be convenient to write to Berne and I have no new address.
The last time I wrote to Mother was a week ago, the same
time as I sent you a postcard. Today I shall not write a
special letter to her, but please send this letter on to her so
that she will not worry and will have some news of me.

It would not be a bad thing if Mitya, on his return, were also
to take up paper-spoiling. I have not yet given an answer
to his “theoretical” letter; the fact of the matter was that
I was so absent-minded when I was in Moscow that I did
not remember anything of what he told me about the
question that interested him. I could not gain a completely
definite impression from his letter—first, because it was too
short and, secondly, because I have here no Russian
translation of the book he quotes and cannot get the necessary
information.

P.S. I am thinking more keenly and more often over the
idea of arranging for parcels of books to be sent here from
some capital-city library; I am at times beginning to think
that without that arrangement I shall not be able to carry
on literary work here; an outside stimulus is very necessary
and I have absolutely nothing of the sort here.

Notes

[1]Dmitry Ulyanov went to Kazan in connection with the sale of
Kokushkino after the death of L. A. Ponomaryova. The very
unpleasant ending of which Lenin writes was that both shares,
that of Ponomaryova and of Lenin’s mother, might be left to
the latter with all their debts.

Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya (1869–1939)—professional
revolutionary, prominent figure in the Communist Party and
the Soviet state; the wife of Lenin.

She began her revolutionary activity in 1890 in student
Marxist groups in St. Petersburg. From 1891 to 1896 she was a teacher
at the Sunday Evening School outside the Neva Tollgate and
conducted Social-Democratic propaganda among factory workers
She met Lenin when they were working together in the winter
of 1894. In 1895 she was one of the organisers of the St. Petersburg
League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.
In August 1896 she was arrested and sentenced to exile for three
years; she started her term of exile with Lenin in Shushenskoye
and finished it alone in Ufa. After her return from exile in 1901
she went abroad and worked as secretary of the newspaper Iskra.
She played an active part in preparing the Second Congress of
theR.S.D.L.P., which she attended as a delegate with voice but
no vote. After the Congress she was secretary of the editorial
board of the Bolshevik newspapers Vperyod and Proletary. She
played an active part in preparing for the Third Congress of the
Party. While working abroad she maintained an extensive
correspondence with Party organisations in Russia. During the years
of reaction she took part in the struggle against the liquidators
and the otzovists. In 1911 she worked in the Party school at
Longjumeau; after the Prague Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (1912)
she helped Lenin establish contact with Party organisations in
Russia, with Pravda and with the Bolshevik group in the Fourth
Duma. In 1915 she was a delegate to the International Women’s
Conference in Berne.

Nadezhda Krupskaya returned to Russia with Lenin after
the February Revolution of 1917 and worked in the Secretariat
of the Central Committee of the Party; she took an active part in
preparing and carrying out the October Socialist Revolution.
After the revolution she became a member of the Collegium of
the People’s Commissariat of Education and in 1921 became head
of the Chief Committee for Political Education; in 1929 she was
appointed Deputy People’s Commissar for Education. Nadezhda
Krupskaya was one of the founders of the Soviet system of
education and a leading theoretician in the field of pedagogy. She
wrote a number of books on problems of public education and
communist upbringing, and on the women’s and youth movements.
She also wrote her reminiscences of Lenin. She participated in
all Party Congresses (except the 1st and 5th), became a member
of the Central Control Commission in 1924 and a member of the
Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.) in 1927. She was a member
of all convocations of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee
and of the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R. and
was a deputy to the First Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. and a
member of its Presidium.

[3]The Neva Society {or the Organisation of Popular Entertainments,
the report of whose committee is mentioned here, was founded in
St. Petersburg in 1885; at first it was a private circle and later,
in 1891, was formed into an independent society with a set of rules
and an official name. The society had its own theatres, concert
halls and sports premises in the area beyond the Neva Tollgate,
where most factories were concentrated. The society arranged
carnivals, lectures, concerts, plays, dances, etc.; it also
organised workers’ choirs, reading-rooms and kindergartens. One of the
Society’s reading-rooms was used by members of Marxist study
circles for meetings and talks with workers. Before her arrest in
1896, Nadezhda Krupskaya and other Marxist women teachers
made extensive use of the reading-room.